One of the most important issues in a wireless communication system is to increase of capacity of the system by decreasing interference. Array antennas (also known as smart antennas) have been developed to improve capacity and to reduce interference. A smart antenna uses a plurality of antenna elements to generate a directional beam radiating signals only toward a particular direction in azimuth, and selectively detects signals transmitted from a particular direction. With a smart antenna, a wireless communication system is able to increase capacity and reduce interference since signals are radiated to a narrow region in a coverage area. This increases overall system capacity since a transmitter may increase the transmission power level of the directional beam without causing excessive interference to other transmitters and receivers, such as wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs) and base stations.
A wireless communication system generally comprises a plurality of nodes, such as base stations and radio network controllers, or the like. The nodes are typically connected to each other with wired connections, such as a mesh network or a cellular network. The nodes communicate with each other and transmit messages, such as backhaul messages.
However, there is a disadvantage with wired connections for establishing a backhaul network in that wired connections are expensive, time consuming, and inflexible for modification or change of the network. In particular, mesh networking requires nodes to be connected with each other. When a new node is added to the mesh network, there is a large burden (in terms of both cost and time) for establishing new connections to the new node for backhauling.
Therefore, there is a need for a cost effective, less time consuming, and flexible method and system for establishing a backhaul network.